Shelton Mayor Mark Lauretti is in danger of being left off the Republican primary ballot for lieutenant governor, which would be another blow to Danbury counterpart and running mate Mark Boughton's chances to qualify for public funding in the governor's race.

Up against a Tuesday deadline for cities and towns to finish counting the signatures collected by petition candidates, Lauretti needed to pick up the pace significantly Monday to reach the names threshold of 8,190 active and enrolled Republicans, Hearst Connecticut Media learned.

Lauretti still had more than half-way to go entering the final day in which local registrars of voters can validate the names, sources familiar with his petition drive told the newspaper.

Hampering the effort was the failure of some campaign workers and volunteers to submit the names of Republicans to the registrars in their municipalities of residence, the sources said.

State law makes no provision for the registrars to cross-check the names of Republicans from other municipalities, rendering hundreds, if not thousands, of petition signatures void.

"If we didn't have all those nuances to deal with, I probably think we'd be there," Lauretti told Hearst Monday. "Things like that can be very frustrating because the intent is met, but you get disqualified because of a technicality."

Boughton, unable to qualify for $1.4 million in public funding for the primary without the help of Lauretti, wasn't ready to wave a white flag on the petition drive, which was coordinated by the two campaigns.

"We think we're close," Boughton said. "It's just all a speculation game at this point."

"We are getting a steady stream of petition pages from Mark Lauretti's drive to petition his way onto the Republican primary ballot," said Av Harris, a spokesman for Secretary of the State Denise Merrill. "Tuesday would be the last day that registrars can report to us the number of signatures of enrolled Republicans in their municipality that have signed for Lauretti to be on the ballot."

In Shelton, where Lauretti was first elected mayor in 1991 and campaign workers concentrated their efforts, the signatures of 1,730 Republicans were validated and turned over to the secretary of the state Monday, said Peter Pavone, the city's GOP registrar of voters. Lauretti said another 200 to 300 names were thrown out.

Danbury is expected to complete its tally on Tuesday, according to Republican Registrar Mary Ann Doran, who said that about 2,000 names were turned in to her office.

Boughton put the number of valid signatures at about 1,400.

"Your rate of validation on these petitions will be about 70 or 75 percent," he said. "We expect all that. That's part of the process."

To Danbury's south, Ridgefield came through with 400 to 500 signatures, according to Boughton, who said his campaign has braced for the possibility of Lauretti falling short of the mark.

Lauretti emerged as a potential savior of Boughton's bid for public funding last month, after Boughton's original running mate, former Groton Mayor Heather Bond Somers, opted to run for lieutenant governor on her own.

Boughton's viability as a candidate for governor hinges on his ability to pool campaign contributions with Lauretti to get to the $250,000 fundraising threshold of the state's so-called clean elections program, which limits individual contributions to $100.

Boughton is about $75,000 short of qualifying on his own for public funding. Lauretti raised more than $100,000 in an unsuccessful bid for governor before shifting gears to the lieutenant governor's race.

In contrast, Tom Foley, the GOP's endorsed candidate for governor and 2010 nominee, could get his $1.4 million in public funding as soon as Friday, after qualifying on his own.

The winner of the three-way primary, which includes state Senate Minority Leader John McKinney, R-Fairfield, will get another $6 million for the general election, under the program.

There is no provision for Lauretti to join Boughton on the ballot as a write-in candidate, either.

"I don't know what else can be done," Lauretti said. "I don't think that there's any other options that I'm aware of."